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Monthly Archives: April 2017

A new documentary about The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “experimenting with new tools to tell stories in preparation for the end of print in the digital era.”

Did you catch that? THE END OF PRINTWhat a frightening thought. Although the “Print is Dead” philosophy has been around for years and years, I don’t think it will ever die — at least not until digital ad revenue equals print ad revenue. Until that happens, or gets pretty close, newspaper owners are not going to kill their main sources of revenue.

Back in 2008, when The Rocky Mountain News shut down because of financial and digital pressures, it was largely because they couldn’t adapt to this new media environment. We discussed their film Final Edition extensively, and I envisioned Digital Edition as a sort of response to that film.

WatchDigital Edition at the director’s site or on Amazon Prime. … and you heard that correctly in the film: at one time the AJC was losing (use your Dr. Evil voice) ONE MILLION DOLLARS — a week!

Full disclosure:I work for Cox Media Group of which the AJC is part of. Although I work in the same building, I am rarely, if ever, on the newsroom floor. I did work for the AJC briefly several decades ago.

You’ve probably never heard of Pittsburg, Kansas. But there are some crackerjack-smart journalists there.

The high school newspaper, The Booster Redux, has earned coverage across the nation’s media for their work in uncovering some suspicious things in Amy Robertson’s, the almost-new principal’s background, leading to her resignation.

Exhibit 1: The White Pine Bay Current on A&E’s “Bates Motel.” That’s young Normal Bates hiding behind the headlines of the fake newspaper in the fictional town of White Pine Bay. Not a fan of the caps hed style, but what bothers me more is the spelling of “Current” instead of “Courant.” Did the prop people do this on purpose? I’m thinking no. They just messed this one up.

Exhibit 2: The Nesbit Daily Times, from CMT’s “Sun Records.” Although Nesbit exists I’m not finding record of the NDT on the Interwebs. Kudos to the props department for capturing the style of a 1950’s newspaper. But, this looks like more of big city newspaper, not a small-town newspaper that I expect the real Nesbit would have had. I do like how the hed says Inter-State instead of Interstate as we all have come to say.

Exhibit 2: And that same issue of the Nesbit Daily Times makes a strategic re-appearance at the end of the episode. That’s the Tom “Colonel” Parker character. I doubt we’ll be seeing that issue again, but don’t fret, the Colonel just took a nasty beating, he’s not dead and will go on to be Elvis Presley’s manager.

Here’s another Hollywood newspaper, the New York Bulletin. Apparently, this is a thing in the Marvel Comics sphere since 1984.

I love this, because if you go to the Marvel wiki, there’s even a “correction” on the drop hed:

The cover for the “Battle of NY” incorrectly states that hundreds were killed when the actual death toll, according to statistics compiled by the United Nations, was seventy-four.

Aside from that, I think that it’s great that even in the fictional world folks are framing important front pages of newspapers. I suspect that in the real world, there are not too many people printing out webpages and framing them.